Shield Courthouses from ICE: Immigration Enforcement in Court Settings Makes Us Less Safe

By Lucy Lang and Robert M. Morganthau

April 28, 2019

Originally published in NY Daily News

The current federal administration is flirting with the ill-conceived notion of appointing an “immigration czar,” deportation efforts have been stepped up across the land, and 280 immigrants were arrested at work in Texas earlier this month. Most alarmingly, the heightened enforcement now reaches into our halls of justice, as even courthouses are regularly swept by immigration officials. Prosecutors across the country, and the communities they serve, should be extremely concerned.

The massively increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and officers from Customs and Border Protection chills participation in the criminal justice system, fundamentally undermining prosecutors’ ability to maintain public safety. The New York State Office of Court Administration’s recent directive is an important step in curtailing this crisis, but is not enough. States should support legislation and prosecutors everywhere should develop internal protocols to protect vulnerable members of our communities.

Reporting a crime and cooperating with law enforcement is neither easy nor convenient. Nor should it be, given the stakes for people charged with crimes. But crime victims and witnesses deserve, at a bare minimum, to find a safe place in the courthouse; all members of the community must trust that reporting crimes, facilitating investigations into wrongdoing, and appearing in courthouses will not expose them to seizure by ICE.

Since the new presidential administration began, local law enforcement in multiple states has found decreased reporting of crimes and decreased investigative cooperation from immigrant communities. And who can blame these communities, who daily hear tell of courthouse and other sweeps that result in detention, deportation, and other consequences?

In New York alone, in just the first year of this presidency, immigration related arrests in courthouses went up by 1,200%. This is a problem for prosecutors everywhere — indeed, recent ACLU research shows that immigrant communities across the country are often highly aware of immigration sweeps in faraway states, deterring the reporting of crimes and participation in the criminal justice system. This very real concern is being reported by prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, legal service providers and court personnel alike.

The criminal process relies on the participation of citizens from all swaths of life. The prosecution of street crimes ranging from petit larceny to assault often call upon bus riders, subway commuters, shop employees, and passersby to testify as eyewitnesses, or simply to authenticate surveillance video or other physical evidence. We cannot allow cooperation to become not simply an inconvenience but an actual hazard to portions of the population.

Speaking as former prosecutors, this is a particularly dangerous problem for families suffering from domestic violence. Victimized women and children have long expressed fear for their own deportation should they alert or cooperate with law enforcement. That fear can be compounded by anxiety about potential immigration consequences to their abuser as well. Under current policies, 82% of prosecutors surveyed report that domestic violence is now both increasingly underreported, and harder to investigate and prosecute. This is unconscionable.

The Protect Our Courts Act, pending in Albany, offers much-needed protections to immigrant communities. New Yorkers should support this legislation, and other states should do the same. But prosecutors in particular are duty-bound to protect the public, and should develop internal expertise in immigration and other collateral consequences, in order to ensure that such issues are appropriately taken into account for everyone in the courthouse.

Solving crimes is hard enough, with 40% of violent crime nationwide remaining unsolved. Inhumane and fear-inducing immigration practices make it all the more difficult for the people we elect to protect us to do their jobs. Law enforcement is charged with protecting everyone, which requires that courthouses be for the administration of justice rather than the enactment of political agendas. Aggressive and xenophobic immigration enforcement is a danger to us all.